Hello. I specialize in graphic design for web and print projects.
This page crashes Internet Explorer. How? It seems just about every version of Internet Explorer has some bug that can be exploited.
To crash Internet Explorer 7, some CSS (valid, even!) is applied to all links, setting them to relative positioning. The next line sets both spans and links to absolute positioning. This, for some reason, causes IE to choke on links, where the correct action would be simply to set links to absolute positioning.
To crash IE 6 we use the code onLoad=”window()”. This isn’t really a valid action to call, but it shouldn’t really kill the browser. Yet it does.
To crash IE 5, we create an invalid form field with <input type crash>. Internet Explorer dies when it reads this. Internet Explorer is, of course, closed source so no one can be sure why.
Perhaps some of you are visiting with the Internet Explorer 8 Beta. I’m not sure if any of this code crashes it, if not I’ll add some upon the public release of the browser.
23 Responses:
Comment by Dhawal
It does not crash IE 8.0
Comment by Tyler
I’ll make it crash IE8 as soon as it comes out of beta - I don’t want to spend a few hours trying to figure out ways to crash it only to find out in a month that it’s fixed and I have to find a new way.
Then again, IE8 passes the Acid 2 test, maybe it’s standards complaint enough not to choke on legitimate code.
Comment by prime
I’m a FireFox user, and when you say things like “Their browser sucks.” then your just a loser fanboy.
Comment by Tyler
Any browser that crashes while interpreting code sucks. And what I’m a fanboy of I can’t be sure. I’ve linked to quite a few browsers.
Note that my opinion may change as of the release of IE8, which appears to be much more standards compliant.
I may or may not be a loser, I’m not debating that. :p
Comment by Eaglebird
It doesn’t crash my IE6.
Then again I’ve actually taken the time to keep it up to date and set all the security and settings options.
Comment by Sajith.M.R
Very nice observation.
Comment by Ryan
Lol, awesome page. Keep up the good work!
Duly stumbled.
Comment by Ab
I use FF and it crashes.
Fuck you.
Comment by Eric Seiden
It doesn’t crash IE5 on the Mac. Not that I care since I use FireFox anyway
Comment by lailai
Fuck you! I am using ff 3 and it crashs!!! SHIT
Comment by Opera
Opera rules!
Comment by Manhandle
Congratulations, you can make IE crash (well, some versions at least). I run firefox - there you don’t even have to try to have it crash on random pages. There is hardly a browser that is flawless, but as long as you can code a site and not worry about crashes (without trying to find that special case where it crashes), your point is invalid.
Make your point about standard support, and I’d almost agree with you, if it wasn’t because the reason that each browser has it’s own way to implement CSS (among other things) is because W3C didn’t get off their asses and make it a standard before people started to implement it.
Comment by matt
i hate to say this, but IE not just crush with web pages, even application plugin also crushes.. sigh
Comment by matt
wow thats really intersting. I’ll be sure to not use some of those things in my pages.
Comment by Moy
I found something interesting: When I tried to go to your page, my McAfee Antivirus show me the following message about a file in Temporary Internet Files:
this_page_crashes_ie[1].htm is infected with JS/Exploit-BO.gen Trojan. File successfully deleted
My IE6 did not crash but did not show me the complete page just the following:
This page crashes Internet Explorer. Why not switch to a better
It seems the antivirus company is helping Microsoft with their crippled browser…
Greets
Moy
Comment by Hakan
it does not crash my IE7.
Comment by James
Good work! …
Nice to see some effort going into good causes!
Comment by Broken Jpg
When I ran this page on IE7 it crashed but McAfee came up and deleted a Trojan, or so it said it was, that I got from the page. What is up with that?
Comment by Broken Jpg
With more investigation, it appears that McAfee doesn’t like content.ie5. It says its a trojan.
Comment by Broken Jpg
Here is my log file
8/12/2008 3:22:25 PM Statistics:
8/12/2008 3:22:25 PM Files scanned: 166470
8/12/2008 3:22:25 PM Files detected: 0
8/12/2008 3:22:25 PM Files cleaned: 0
8/12/2008 3:22:25 PM Files deleted: 0
8/12/2008 3:23:28 PM Engine version = 5200.2160
8/12/2008 3:23:28 PM AntiVirus DAT version = 5357.0000
8/12/2008 3:23:28 PM Number of detection signatures in EXTRA.DAT = None
8/12/2008 3:23:28 PM Names of detection signatures in EXTRA.DAT = None
8/12/2008 3:30:06 PM Deleted UNION\XXXXXXX C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Documents and Settings\XXXXXXX\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\C56AP5IF\this_page_crashes_ie[1].html JS/Exploit-BO.gen (Trojan)
8/12/2008 3:36:10 PM Deleted UNION\XXXXXXX C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Documents and Settings\XXXXXXX\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\8HYJGYNL\this_page_crashes_ie[1].html JS/Exploit-BO.gen (Trojan)
8/12/2008 3:39:12 PM Deleted UNION\XXXXXXX C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Documents and Settings\XXXXXXX\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\3KRUHDRY\this_page_crashes_ie[1].html JS/Exploit-BO.gen (Trojan)
Comment by Vjekoslav
So what? Firefox 3 crashes several times a day on my computer. Every browser has bugs.
Comment by Tyler
@Broken Jpg: I find your log of specific interest. The name of the “Virus”, JS/Exploit … implies that the Javascript exploit (onload=Window()) can be used for, well, exploit purposes. It would be my best guess, then, that this code causes some sort of buffer overflow, though I have not looked at it at all in that sense.
I’m going to look into this more, thanks.
Comment by Steven
I use Opera, usually. I keep Firefox on standby for StumbleUpon (the toolbar) and other video uses that are not compliant in Opera. I’m on Linux.
No IE.
Say your words!